Preparing Educators to Serve Disabled Individuals in Diverse Community Settings: A Transdisciplinary Response.

Williams, Wes; And Others

Over the past decade there has been a growing movement to deinstitutionalize disabled persons, and educational services should be adapted to fit the needs of these persons. There has also been an enormous growth in the prevalence, scope, and diversity of community services that support them and their families. Increasing proportions of fiscal resources are being allocated to community services through sheltered workshops, group homes, early detection programs, public school programs, supervised apartments, and adult education programs. The delivery of these diverse community services has required the participation, cooperation, and collaboration of professionals trained in many different academic disciplines. Multidisciplinary and/or multi-agency approaches are being used in programming for the handicapped. The ultimate goal of these approaches has been to improve the services and support to the disabled by eliminating the fragmentation of services, increasing the coordination of actions between agencies, and improving communication between professionals. This paper: (1) identifies and articulates a set of generic knowledge and skills that define a core of competency clusters around which a preparation program could be organized; (2) describes several alternative methods for teaching the core competency clusters; and (3) discusses issues and challenges that remain for programs which choose to prepare such professionals. (JD)